Read our school visit diaries!
31 October 2008
Altes Kurfürstliches Gymnasium Bensheim, Germany
Kanchan Anand and Johanna Scheuermann
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On 31st of October 2008 we visited the AKG ("Altes Kurfürstliches Gymnasium") in Bensheim. We, Kanchan Anand and Johanna Scheuermann, are both scientists working at the EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) in Heidelberg.
Our visit was organised by Philipp Gebhardt from the SET-Routes Programme at EMBL and Ullrich Treubert-Zimmermann, who is a science teacher at the AKG. Our goal was to give a talk about our work to about 200 students attending the 10th grade, meaning 15-16 years of age.
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Johanna introduced the institute and the daily life in a laboratory by showing photographs taken at her workplace and sharing some experience on the most important aspects of working in a molecular biology lab and specifically on the handling of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which she uses as a model organism. She also explained the contents of her work to the students by discussing basic notions of gene regulation mechanisms, both in humans as well as in Drosophila. She illustrated this further by showing images of real tissues, cells, and subcellular structures, which enabled the students to get an impression on how gene regulation roughly works and why it is crucially important for any living organism. Specifically, she made the students familiar with the idea that DNA, the carrier of our genetic information, is structurally organised in a highly regulated fashion and that the changes in this higher order structure of the DNA are fundamentally involved in gene regulation.
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Kanchan talked about protein crystallography. She started with the motivation for this field of research and how it directly affects and helps the society. She explained the importance of proteins for human beings, how and what they are made of and the role of proteins in the cellular machinery. Then she described protein crystals in relation to all the examples of other crystals that we see in our daily life - from salt, sugar to ornaments etc. She brought different tools and many images to explain this in a graphical way. Then she told the students about the usefulness of protein crystals, how and why they are needed. She explained about X-rays and how one can measure and eventually determine the structure of crystals through X-rays. Kanchan gave an example of her own research story where the protein crystal structure of the main enzyme of a virus that is pathogenic to humans helped towards the first steps of making a drug to cure the viral infection. And in the end she gave some references for the students who were further interested in the subject.
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It was striking to see how interested the students were in our work and how well they managed to follow our talks, although they were clearly above the level of a normal school curriculum. They had many very thoughtful questions and were very enthusiastic about what they heard. Also teachers, parents and the head of the school were very positive about our visit to the AKG and appreciated the initiative a lot. For us, too, it was a very good and nice experience and we would definitely recommend continuing similar projects in the future.
Newspaper Article:
Für die Naturwissenschaften begeistern
Bergsträßer Anzeiger, 5 November 2008